Approximately half of customers feel that a company's overall brand is dependent on website design.

Your business website design speaks volumes about your business and can either help or harm your business efforts. Your business website needs to be designed to promote your business and communicate your business's message, identity, and purpose.

How can you improve your business website design to take your business to the next level? Check out our expert tips and tricks below.

Focus More on the Objectives of the Website

The first step to creating an engaging and attractive custom website is knowing your goals. What is your bottom line? What do you hope to achieve by launching your website?

Defining the goals of your website will help you understand the purpose of its existence. And you can't do this without understanding your customer base and why they would visit your website.

Do your customers visit your physical location first and then go to your website? Or do they find you online but never come to your physical location? Does a customer visit the website for educational content or to buy what you sell?

By answering all these questions, you will clearly define the primary objective of your website. Fortunately, there are numerous metric tools online, such as Google Analytics, that help you better understand what your customers are doing on your website. Such tools provide website owners with valuable data that can be instrumental in making decisions.

Examine essential metrics such as top pages, traffic sources, session duration, and bounce rates. These will help you determine whether your website is hitting the mark or falling short.

Ensure Easy Navigation

When a customer or a user visits your website, do they have an uncomplicated and seamless experience? The more challenging it is to navigate a website, the higher the chances that users leave before finding the relevant information they are looking for out of frustration. Talk to your business website design and find out how to make your website easy to navigate.

Start by examining the user's intention and finding ways to provide them with what they are looking for on your site. Ensure they find this information as quickly and efficiently as possible.

For example, online users visiting restaurant websites are likely looking for directions to the restaurant, the menu, or how to make an online reservation. On the other hand, users visiting contractor's sites are looking for information such as the type of projects the contractor handles, their timeline, and the pricing.

Whatever your clients are looking for, ensure you place it at the homepage to make it easier to access. You can also create a separate page from the homepage and link it using a sizable visually-dominated call to action statement.

Keep everything as simple as possible. The site's design should be simple but attractive to ensure your users have an enjoyable user experience.

Create a Simple Website Design

According to research, users who find business websites visually appealing often associate that aesthetic and attractive quality with trustworthiness, usability, and professionalism. In fact, over 75% of customers judge a company's credibility and reliability based on how its web design looks.

With these statistics in mind, it's time to consider whether you're following the simple website design best practices. These include:

  • Responsive web design for all devices, including mobile phones
  • Plenty of whitespaces
  • Consistent use of fonts and colors
  • Easy readability

When looking to improve website design, always take the "less is always more" approach. Never try to put everything on a single page. Instead, try spreading the information evenly and taking full advantage of the available whitespace.

This gives your website a minimalist and clean aesthetic. As a result, it increases readability and enhances the user experience.

Major marketing buzz words such as user-friendly and intuitive boil down to a simple website that makes it easier for users to find what they came for.

Speed up Your Site

Speed is the ruling force when it comes to your site's design. According to a study, there is a 90% increase in the probability that a user will abandon your website when the loading speed increases from one to five seconds.

The best way to increase the loading speed of your custom website is by eliminating any unnecessary JavaScript. This is the number one reason your website could be experiencing slow-loading speeds.

Audit your website by using a website testing tool. This will give you insightful data over a wide variety of metrics that could lead to slow loading speeds originating from anywhere. You should also use an average phone over a 3G connection to test your site and get an authentic feel of the site's performance.

Another way to optimize your website speed is by compressing overly-large photos and video content. Uploading smaller-sized images could significantly improve your website's loading speeds.

Pinpoint and Fix 404 Errors

A 404 error occurs when you have an existing website but you have deleted or disabled a web page. If your site is well built and designed, the user will see a 404 error page instead of the disabled content. However, this isn't good for your brand reputation.

You want a user to be redirected from the 404 Error page to a different page with similar content to the deleted or disabled page. Conduct a full audit of your business website at least once a month to ensure there are no 404 error pages.

Are You Ready to Improve Your Business Website Design?

Are you looking to improve your current business website design or build a new custom website for your company?

Contact us today at Optuno, and we will ensure you get a custom business website at an affordable price. We work with SMBs to help them compete with other larger enterprises in their respective industries.